Published 4:00 am, Sunday, May 24, 1998

As Bunny Wailer points out, the late reggae superstars Bob Marley and Peter Tosh were like family. "My father and Bob's mother had a child, which is my and Bob's sister," says Wailer. "And Peter got my sister a baby, which is Andrew (Tosh), my nephew. So it's a family situation." It's been 17 years since Marley succumbed to cancer, 11 since the elder Tosh was shot to death. Wailer is the last surviving member of the original Wailers, the renowned reggae group that introduced the island music of Jamaica to a rock-oriented international audience. Now 50, he shows no sign of abandoning the legacy of his late colleagues. Born Neville O'Riley Livingston ("Bunny" is a pet name from childhood), the singer won a Grammy last year for "Hall of Fame," one of several albums he has cut over the years revisiting the Wailers songbook. Currently he is at work on two projects -- "Standing Ovation," a 50-track retrospective celebrating "Bunny Wailer from baby to now," as he puts it, and "Communication," which he suggests will be a contemporary blend of reggae, hip hop and electronic dance music. Wailer brings a 17- piece orchestra to the Maritime Hall on Friday for his first San Francisco appearance in several years. His supporting musicians will include members of vintage Jamaican groups such as the Skatalites and the Gaylads, some of whom are pushing 70. "They're still moving, playing, jumping," says Wailer with a dry laugh. As punks turn to ska, hip hoppers to dance hall and "post-rockers" to dub, pop music's recent preoccupation with Jamaican styles has not gone unnoticed by this dreadlocked elder statesman. "Everybody's wanting a little touch of reggae now," Wailer says, "because reggae fits into every format. There's a serious cultural exchange taking place." As a "reggae specialist" now "venturing into other territories," Wailer stresses that Rastafarianism will continue to inform his music. "I try to always maintain the message," he says in his professorial patois, speaking on the phone from Los Angeles. "I have new tracks like 'Almighty God Is a Rapper' -- 'with the word He created everything.' I'm trying to give the youth some more spiritual connection." Reggae's "consciousness," he says, was just as instrumental in attracting a global audience as the music's unmistakable lilt. "The music caused a lot of people to change their lives and their convictions, and to be aware of the King of Kings. It was saying something a little different from 'Darling, I love you' and 'Baby, I need you.' " Of course, like so many of their Kingston counterparts, the young Wailers grew up on a steady diet of American pop, soul, and R&B songs that dealt with just such boy-girl trivialities. "American music was a part of Jamaican culture," Wailer says. "We used to listen to Rosco Gordon and Louis Jordan. Then we started getting into Louis Armstrong, Louis Prima, Bill Haley, that rock 'n' roll. If they were hot in America they were hot in Jamaica -- until we started to make our own music." His own group, Wailer says, was inspired by the vocal harmonies of such soul and do-wop groups as the Platters, the Impressions and the Miracles. Songs of desire are still an important part of Wailer's output. In Jamaica, bawdy lyrics are known as "slackness," a style for which Wailer took some heat during the dance-hall heyday of the 1980s. Generally speaking, Wailer says, frank singing about sex is the province of the young and frisky.

"Buju Banton, who started out singing about girls and stuff, now he's a Rastaman. Beenie Man, too. Even Shabba Ranks is changing his words. But you still have the younger one that's coming up that's gonna be dealing with that toilet talk."

Still, Wailer says, it's only natural that "conscious" songwriters sing about lust and carnality at least some of the time. "The Creator created male and female, and he did that based on principles of righteousness and beauty. The greatest part of any communication is in mating."

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So what people call slackness, there's a time for this and a time for that."There's a time for everything -- a time where you gotta be working, and a time when you can have fun. A time you can be laughing, and a time you gotta be mourning." Sexy music, he says, is party music. "That's basically the entertainment language. When people put away their work and their troubles and trials, then they come together. That's where parties come in. And that's where families are made." Wailer has seen his own extended family carry on the music-making tradition of the departed Tosh and Marley, with Andrew Tosh now several years into his own career and Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers recently making room onstage for their younger brothers, the solo acts Julian and Damian "Jr. Gong." Two of Wailer's own little Livingstons recently joined their father in recording a song called "Teeny Whoppers," he says. The losses of the other Wailers "have given us a lot of gain," Wailer says. "Their legacy is eternal. I'm satisfied, and I have no right to think otherwise. "Nothing was wasted, and no one went in vain. We have to make sure of that. Everything went just as far as planned, so give thanks."

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